A previous post included some aerial photos of SFO taken as I flew out of Oakland. That departure routing also takes you over Hunters Point and then Candlestick Park. The demolition process appears to be well underway with a section of the stadium gone. I was glad to get a shot of it while it was mostly still intact. Soon it will be gone.
While most of the attention at Ano Nuevo is on the males as they fight for dominance of each other and the females, there are moments when you get the pups alone or with their mothers. Some of these moments fit the cuteness requirements. After the hulks of the males, here are some more gooey pictures.
Aside from taking pictures of the seals at Ano Nuevo, I also got some video. Having the tripod with me made shooting video at long range practical. Getting the camera on them when they are doing something interesting is not always easy. The do something and then stop as soon as you get the camera on them. I think they know what you are doing. Even so, they still did enough to make some of it worth saving in the edit!
A year ago, Nancy bought me a ticket for a sunrise photo tour of the beaches at Ano Nuevo State Park when the elephant seals were taking over the place. I posted shots of that here if you want to reference back. I was keen to try the whole thing again this year but there was no sign of it on the website. One morning, I happened to look again and not only was it available but all sessions were sold out except one. I clicked on that one and found that only one ticket was left so bought it straight away. As with last year, I found myself up horribly early in the morning outside the gate of the park waiting for the ranger to show up. Unlike last year when the weather was cold, wet and windy, this year the skies were clear and there was no wind. I had actually overdressed after my previous experience.
We got to a series of locations where we were really in amongst the seals. It was predominantly males although there were some females and a few pups scattered in amongst them. Because the weather had been warm, the seals had stayed close to the water. In cooler weather they can often be found well up in the dunes.
The males were not as aggressive as last year. There were a few confrontations while we were there, some of which drew a little blood. However, the ranger said that they had already sized each other up so the hierarchy was quite established. We did see a few scuffles and there were occasions where the males headed for the females causing some evasion tactics and sometimes when they didn’t move fast enough!
The contrast to the previous year was obvious from a photography perspective. This time I had taken a tripod having found the last time that you weren’t constantly on the move and that the early light needed it. We did have far nicer light as well with the sun showing up and providing some great warmth in the shots taken early on. This is a fun thing to do and you are finished by about 9:30. You can then enjoy the rest of the park if you wish. However, part of you will be trying to get the smell out of your nose. Hanging around in amongst elephant seals does introduce you to a fragrance you won’t forget in a hurry.
While you are not allowed inside most of the buildings at Bodie, you can walk right up to the windows to take a look inside. This is one of those times when photography can really help. The windows are not cleaned so there is a layer of dust and grime on them. With bright sunlight above, it is hard to get a good view of the inside. However, a wide angle lens pressed right up against the glass, possibly including a spare hand to cover a particular reflection, means that you get a far clearer view. A little tweaking of the contrast in Lightroom and the interior shots look far better than what you recall seeing.
Consequently, I was able to see a lot more of what was inside some of the buildings when we got home. Whether it was disused beds decaying, ceilings coming apart or the interior of a schoolroom, you could see a lot of what was left behind. Some of the buildings showed a great deal of what had been there before. The dining and pool tables in the hotel, the exercise equipment at the Oddfellows Hall or the shelves in the shop all told a story of a life long gone.
Not only buildings show the history of Bodie. There is plenty of machinery that gives some insight into what had gone before in this town. As soon as you leave the parking lot, a selection of machinery from one of the mines has been relocated to let you see how the mines got everything up and down. The big steam pistons, cable reels and the lift cages the guys went down in are there to wander around.
That isn’t all though. There are quite a few bits and pieces scattered around the town where they were left. A couple of vehicles are on display in good condition. These are interesting but the ones that were unreserved interested me far more. The metal parts of small trucks have survived while the wooden frames have rotted away. They leave the skeleton like parts slightly sunk into the ground giving the impression that the whole vehicle has sunk. The missing bits leave scope for the imagination to wonder at how the whole thing looked. It is also a detective task to work out exactly what some of the remaining parts are and what joined them together.
Vehicles aren’t the only things to find. Some other machinery is scattered about and that involves even more thought as to what it was for and how it ended up dumped in its current location. The condition of the metalwork is remarkably good. I have no idea whether the park service has done anything to sustain the items but they seem to be petty resilient. I imagine the climate helps to keep things in good shape so hopefully they will be there for generations to come.
Part of our schedule while staying at Mammoth Lakes was to visit Bodie. If you are not familiar with it, Bodie is a ghost town not far from the Nevada line. It was once a mining town and quite a booming (and hairy) place but the demise of the mining left the town devoid of a reason to be. Much of the town was lost to fire but a significant number of buildings remain in pretty much the condition they were when their occupants left. This includes a fair number of interior fixtures and fittings in place.
The Park Service is careful to protect what there is so most of the buildings are closed up. You can look through the windows and there is a tour of the stamping mill. Bar a few places, everything is constructed from wood. The environment has had some effect on them but they are still mostly in good shape. You can see which ones were better constructed at the time. They certainly hold their shape well while some are either collapsing or at least pretty askew.
A few brick structures are around. The bigger ones still seem to be hanging in there while some of the smaller ones have collapsed. Not sure whether this was a result of age or maybe the odd tremor has taken a toll. While the big brick buildings make some sense based on their usage, I was interested in the smaller ones. Was this a status symbol in old Bodie to have a brick structure? I imagine shipping in the materials was a bit harder than for a lumber house and whether the skilled labor was around, I have no idea.
Getting to Bodie requires a trek of about 16 miles from the highway. The last three are on a rough track which can be pretty rough in parts. If you have something suited to rough roads this will be no problem but a regular car takes a bit of a pounding. Fine if it is a rental but a bit more troublesome if it is your own! However, take it easy and it is worth the effort.
A trip to Mammoth Lakes for a long weekend had us exploring some of the local areas of interest. One that our guidebook recommended was The Devil’s Postpile. This was described as an outcrop of basalt formed during the volcanic activity the area experienced quite a while back. We decided to give it a go. I like geologic features and having grown up with pictures of the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland, I knew what basalt could look like.
We weren’t the only ones with this idea. The valley in which the Postpile is located is accessed by a steep, narrow, winding road. Consequently, traffic is very restricted and most visitors use the shuttle bus. This was a lot of people the day we were there and the line for the bus was long and slow. At one point we contemplated bagging the whole thing. We set some time thresholds to be on the bus and we were just inside these when we finally got on board.
It is a short walk from the bus drop off point to the rocks. They are certainly very cool. It is always hard to believe that rocks should form in these hexagonal columns naturally. In this case they are not only vertical but some sections have distorted in different ways so it is a mix of patterns. The harsh shadows of the middle of the day actually helped to emphasize the interesting patterns.
There was a lot of fallen rock in front of the hill which gave some interesting perspective on the size of the columns. When some of the pieces had been split, it was good to see how black the interior was unbleached by years of sun.
However, the best was yet to come. I was wandering behind the trees to see a view of the hills behind us and to get away from the crowds for a moment. I ended up on top of a ridge overlooking the San Joaquin River. The view was beautiful. It was quite funny to think that so many people were wandering along the trail a short distance away and had no idea that they were missing out on a beautiful location. Of course, if they had realized, a part of the beauty would have been gone.
On the walk back to the bus, I made an effort to check out the side trails to see what was here too and got to share some of the lovely views with the others who had stepped off the main path. It always pays to poke around a bit.
While all of the activity on the beach was going on with the males and females, there were also a ton of pups lying around. Once the pups have suckled long enough, they are fat and happy and left to their own devices. They don’t have enough strength so, for the next few weeks, they will move about the beach burning down the fat and strengthening themselves up before heading out to sea.
Meanwhile, they look very cute. They are called weaners when they are left to their own devices. Every image you have of a baby seal is met by the weaners. Small, plump with huge eyes. Just what you imagine. In amongst them were some so-called “super-weaners”. These “little” fellas had got a double dose of mother’s milk and they were huge. Normally in young creatures you imagine that getting extra is good for you. For seals, this is not so much the case. Having all of the extra fat means they are very buoyant. When they head out to see, they tend to bob around on the surface and that makes them easy pickings for the sharks offshore. I guess greed isn’t good for you!
Elements of this post may come with an R Rating. If you are a sensitive soul, look away now. Courtesy of Nancy, I spent a morning in the midst of a crazy place. Ano Nuevo State Refuge is on the Pacific coast about halfway between Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz. The beaches of the park are a popular location for breeding elephant seals. The park protects the seals from the visitors while allowing people to get a good view of them. However, they also run a series of sunrise photo tours. In a small group, you are escorted by a ranger to various locations where you are close in to the action with the seals. And there is some action!
This was something Nancy bought me as a birthday treat. She didn’t come along. Something about a 5am start on a rainy day didn’t appeal to her – not sure why. Calling it a sunrise tour was a little optimistic. The horizontal rain meant it was more a case of dark transitioning to quite dark. However, that didn’t get in the way of experiencing some great stuff.
I was a little unsure of what sort of equipment to take with me. I knew some walking would be involved and ultimately elected to leave the 500mm behind and go with the 70-200 and the 100-400. If I do this again (and there is a good chance I will), I would include the 500mm and a tripod. The early start meant the lighting was pretty difficult. We did walk but spent most of our time in a few locations and only walked when moving between them. Carrying some extra gear would not have been too tricky. Keeping it dry was more of an issue of course!
Auto ISO was a friend in this situation. I went to manual mode, set up the speed and aperture I wanted and let the camera deal with the ISO. With conditions evolving, this made things a lot easier. The newer version of my camera has a function that would have been welcome here and that is the ability to add exposure compensation to the mix. Mine won’t do that sadly. It would have been helpful in this situation. As the light got better, it was possible to go back to a more normal aperture priority shooting approach fixing the ISO and using exposure comp as required. The high ISO capabilities of modern DSLRs are so handy on a shoot like this. The 70-200 is an f2.8 lens so it allowed relatively low ISOs from early on but the 100-400 is an f5.6 at length and so the ISO was really pushing up there. However, while the noise is noticeable, the images really are very useable.
The beach was covered in seals. Various dominant males had their harems scattered around. They were either mating with the females or fighting males that wanted to get in on the act. Some of the males would come in either straight through the front door looking for a fight or sneaking around the side hoping not to be noticed. The result was usually the same. Some of the fights were pretty brief when the challenger realized that they were out of their class. Occasionally they went on for a long time with the males taking chunks out of each other as they swiped their teeth into the neck of their opponent. I have heard the bellow these seals make on video before but in person it really resonates through you.
Meanwhile, a second group of males were waiting down by the water. The females had raised their pups and were now leaving them on the beach and heading back to see. They were fertile again so many males were trying to intercept them as they came to the water out of range of the harem. They had some success with this but were also fighting each other to be in the best spot. Consequently, it was almost non-stop fighting and mating on the beach with the occasional birth taking place too! Good luck to those females because, once they were off the beach, they had the great whites to look forward to a little further offshore.
